Coming up

Variations on the Mainby William Burke​March 14 - 30​Tickets: $18Playwright/director William Burke and composer Catherine Brookman return to JACK with a "theatrical séance for listening," co-directed by Burke and Bryn Herdrich.

After a failed uprising, the few remaining members of a controversial organization hide on New York's outer islands. They're rudderless. They think their leader is dead...until someone claiming to be his wife washes ashore. She says he's alive. And he's looking for her. Written by company members Mieko Gavia and Heather Harvey and directed by Vernice Miller, this is the latest piece created by this Brooklyn-based theatre company that exists to explore and amplify the black experience.

Reparations & PhilanthropyMonday, January 28 at 7 pm In this community conversation, we’ll look at the relation between philanthropic giving and radical social change. We’ll explore examples of new philanthropic initiatives that look to shift power instead of maintaining the status quo, also looking at examples of philanthropy around racial justice that have done little more than further existing hierarchies. With special guests Amadee Braxton of the Leeway Foundation and, by video hook-up, Karen Ferguson, author of the book Top Down: The Ford Foundation, Black Power, and the Reinvention of Racial Liberalism. Moderated by former JACK Co-Director DeeArah Wright.

CHRONICLE X: A Revival By Nia O. WitherspoonJanuary 25 - 27A concert-installation that applies ancient wisdom to contemporary strife through the power of sound and music. At CHRONICLE X, worship at black queer feminist church. Decolonize the sacred. Revive.

Reparations & The ArtsMonday, January 7 at 7:00 pm​As part of its ongoing Reparations365 series exploring the topic of distributive justice for Black Americans, JACK offers a conversation around the theme of repair and the arts, inviting participants to share ideas around shifting power and transforming relationships in the field of the arts. With special guests Imani Uzuri and Candace Feldman, and moderated by former JACK Co-director DeeArah Wright. There will be food!

A re-animation of the memory of a never-ending NYC night — a wild roller coaster ride through alcohol, drugs, sex, joy, loss, and self-discovery. Kareem Lucas weaves together his past and present to interrogate our desperate need for significance, in life and after death, and mythologizes the everyday experience of a common Black man in America.

Portland-based theater company PETE Ensemble brings the work of adventurous playwright Robert Quillen Camp (Chekhov Lizardbrain, All Hands) back to New York after an absence of several years. A provocative performance piece inspired by Nietzsche’s lectures on education, HOW TO LEARN nestles a professor’s story of the banalities of contemporary academic life within an immersive sound environment that moves the piece into a surreal and affecting exploration of the imagination.

REPARATIONS365:Reparations & EducationNov. 28, 2018 at 7 pmJACK offers a conversation around the theme of repair and education. We invite you to explore with us the challenges in our educational system, both local and beyond, and to learn about current efforts to infuse equity into that system. Featured guests include:Kesi Foster (Make the Road NY, and contributor to the Reparations platform for the Movement for Black Lives) Megan Hester (Director of Education Justice Research and Organizing Collaborative at NYU's Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools)Maurice Blackmon (public school teacher and team member of Integrate NYC)The evening will be moderated by artist/educator nicHi douglas. FREE. There will be food!

In Kyung Lee:VögelMonday, November 19 at 7 pmTickets:$10 in advance, $15 at the door

Curated by Stacy Grossfield as part of her IMAGES // LANDSCAPESseries, Korean choreographer In Kyung Lee returns to JACK with “sound & visual poetry on women” -- choreographic impressions of women looking at other women, women loving other women, women moving through life, women's passing of time.

An interactive performance installation by Pioneers Go East Collective that explores and explodes the myth of the American Cowboy and Cowgirl, looking with humor at how chauvinism and bravado transpose into Gay subculture. In the piece, audience members are invited to don Western attire and sit around a theatrical campfire while performers, both live and on video, share stories of bullying, self-discovery and coming out.

"Revolution" is a genre-bending exploration of a Fox News nightmare: what happens if Black people can't take it anymore? Explore a revolution for Black liberation through the eyes of would-be revolutionaries and the surprising personalities they encounter.

Jillian Walker: ​Songs of SpeculationNovember 1 - 3Tickets: $18Songs of Speculation is a lecture that explodes into multi-form performance, calling on the body, time, and the power of music to reclaim histories forgotten or lost. Starting outside of time itself, entering 18th century Louisiana, weaving through a reimagining of Sally Hemings and looping into the future, Walker writes a story of sovereignty for black women in America.

Through experimentation with aesthetics of Afro-Jamaican religion and practices such as nyabingi, maroon and kumina, as well as Pentecostal preaching and street dance, Bessie-nominated dance artist Shamar Wayne Watt creates an immersion into the essence of Jamaican maroonage and the spirit of those who fled and fought off the British colonial rule.

Peter Evans: More is More Records release mini festivalOctober 20 - 21 at 8 pmTickets: $20​Trumpet virtuoso Peter Evans celebrates several new releases with his label More is More, including new solo records by Evans. This label release festival will feature a new band in the works, Being & Becoming, with Evans joined by Joel Ross (vibraphone/ marimba), Nick Jozwiak (bass) and Savannah Grace Harris (drums), plus saxophone and electronics wizard Aaron Burnett and percussion/electronics phenom Levy Lorenzo

The Danger: A Homage to Strange Fruit​By Stacey RoseOctober 4 - 13Tickets:$18​Inspired by the mysterious hanging death of 17-year-old Lennon Lacy in 2014 in Bladenboro, NC, this dystopic ghost play follows the interracial couple He and She into the world of The Station, a long ago abandoned rail station waiting room, an in-between place that houses Black souls who left the earth in violent ways and who constantly seek their way home.

Singer-songwriter-guitarist Toshi Reagon shares an evening of new work in theater, music, words, movement and revolution as part of her 8th annual Word*Rock*Sword* festival exploring women's lives. The evening will feature work by Jacqueline Woodson, Daphne Lopez, Shalewa Mackall, Olive Demetrius and Reagon herself, with more artists to be announced.

Catch The Hearth's production of Gracie Gardner’s “fierce and lovely comedy” (The New York Times) -- a Critic's Pick.​Mary Wallace and Athena are brave, and seventeen, and fencers, and training for the Junior Olympics. They practice together, they compete against each other, they spend their lives together. They wish they were friends.